Real time strategy behemoth Starcraft II has sold 3 million copies worldwide in its first month of release. That’s a lot of zerg rushes.

Blizzard claims that the game is the bestselling PC game of 2010 and the fastest selling RTS of all time. With 3 million sales and plenty of rave reviews; it’s hard to dispute that.

“We appreciate all the enthusiasm that players around the world have shown for StarCraft II,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “It was important to us to deliver an overall gameplay experience that was accessible, balanced, and fun, and it’s been gratifying to see how strongly the global community has already embraced the game.”

Still sitting on the fence about whether or not to give it a go? Check out our review of it here and see what we thought.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, there is a disturbing link between our hobby and so called ‘conflict minerals’. Raise Hope For Congo – a campaign from the Enough project which is tackling the issue head on – were good enough to answer some questions for us. They tell us what the problem is, how they are asking us all to help; and why they believe that we can make a difference.

CG: What are ‘conflict minerals’ and why should we care?

Raise Hope For Congo: Congo’s conflict minerals are the ores that produce the metals tin, tantalum, and tungsten—which we refer to as the 3 Ts—as well as gold. Congo is rich in these lucrative resources and many Congolese civilians rely on mining for their livelihood. However, various armed militia and rebel groups, as well as rogue units of the Congolese army, take control of the mines by force and tax the mineral trading routes, ravaging the country and the Congolese people. Women are particularly targeted through horrific forms of sexual violence. In the last decade in Congo, five million people have been killed and hundreds of tens of thousands of women raped.

The same minerals that fund such armed groups and perpetuate their power can be found in many of our electronic devices—cellphones, laptops, video game systems, digital cameras, and more. This direct link between war in the Congo and the electronics we rely on gives us enormous power as consumers to demand change. By raising our collective voice as consumers, we can end the conflict minerals trade and help bring peace to Congo.

CG: How do these minerals come to be used in the production of electronics such as PCs, Macs, and game consoles?

RHFC: After Congolese miners extract these minerals, the 3Ts and gold make their way to trading houses where they are sent to exporters to be shipped out of Congo. They are also often smuggled across the border into neighboring Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda. From there the minerals are sent to smelters, primarily in East Asia, who convert the minerals into metal form. Finally, the metals are distributed all over the world, including to the United States, where they are used to produce components for common electronic devices.

CG: What responses, if any, have you received from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony on the matter? Are these responses satisfactory?

RHFC: Some companies, like Nintendo, have declined to send any formal response to our attempt to engage and work with them to combat the issue while other companies have been more willing to recognize the problem and begin to take steps to address the use of conflict minerals in their supply chains. Sony Ericsson and Microsoft, have responded by pointing to their existing supplier codes of conduct and have downplayed their ability to control of the use of conflict minerals in their products. While we’re sure that none of these companies want to indirectly contribute to the brutalization and exploitation of Congolese civilians, they’ve allowed themselves to rely solely on the “good word” of their suppliers and failed to do their due diligence and trace and audit the minerals used in their products. This simply isn’t adequate. In order to be deemed credible and conflict-free, these companies must adopt a comprehensive strategy to trace, audit, and certify the minerals in their products as conflict-free.

CG: Can you explain your e mail campaign?

RHFC:The Enough Project’s Raise Hope for Congo campaign has an email campaign to the top 21 electronic companies that likely use conflict minerals in their products. The purpose and goal of this action is to demonstrate to these companies that their consumers want the option to buy conflict-free products. It is our ultimate hope that industry leaders will emerge on the issue when they realize that there is a growing consumer market and financial incentive for them to take the necessary steps and offer certifiably conflict-free products.

CG: Many people are doubtful that e mailing these companies will have any effect at all. Is there really a chance that filling out this online form will make a difference?

RHFC:We believe it already has made a difference. Through executive outreach and consumer pressure (like those emails) the Enough Project has been able to open up a dialogue with several companies about how to begin the process of certifying their products as conflict-free. In addition to these successes, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, also directly responded to a consumer who wrote him asking about Apple’s efforts to address the problem (http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/steve-jobs-statement-on-conflict-minerals/). This clearly demonstrates that the emails and consumer pressure have reached the top levels of electronics companies and have forced them to address the use of conflict minerals in their products.

The U.S. Congress also took a major step forward this year by passing legislation in the Wall Street Reform bill that will require major electronics and other manufacturing companies to find out where they get their minerals from, and to audit to ensure they are not benefiting armed groups. Requiring companies to do their own research into the supplier chain, rather than relying on mere assurances from their suppliers, is a tremendous step toward the introduction of certified conflict free products.

CG: Is it feasible to regulate and legalize the mining of these minerals in conflict areas?

RHFC: Yes, but it will take real work to bring an end to the conflict minerals trade. The Congo conflict minerals problem requires a comprehensive strategy, which must include serious policy action by the international community, the Congolese government, the United Nations, and NGOs – on issues of land tenure, security, governance, rule of law, and livelihoods. Fortunately, the work to regulate Congo’s mineral trade is already underway, and key players like the Enough Project are willing to see it through.

Additionally, we have already seen a successful model play out in recent years. A decade ago, wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Liberia were being fueled by the illegal trade in blood diamonds. With a comprehensive response by the international community which included setting up a certification system, the conflict diamond trade was significantly reduced and these countries now experience a degree of peace and stability as a result. The obvious parallel to the conflict minerals campaign is that when key stakeholders come together to address the causes of violence instead of just treating the symptoms, that peace is possible to achieve.

CG: Were electronic companies to stop using conflict minerals from the Congo, how would that improve the lives of those living there?

RHFC: Ending the conflict in eastern Congo is the best way to help the Congolese people recover from more than a decade of suffering and violence. A critical aspect of this effort is severing the link between the minerals trade and the armed groups committing atrocities in Congo. But a comprehensive approach is required to improve the Congolese mining sector, one that improves livelihoods for miners and complements corporate responsibility.

Artisanal miners work in extremely difficult conditions in eastern Congo and earn an average of $1-5 per day, largely because the armed groups extract such enormous profits on the backs of their labor. Efforts to end the conflict minerals trade are meant to help the industry differentiate between legal and illegal mining—which is built on brutality, extortion, and slave labor including the use of children.

The status quo is simply unacceptable given the situation and doing nothing is not an option.

CG: Where else can companies source these minerals from? How much more expensive would alternative sources prove to be?

RHFC: The percentages of the global supply of the 3Ts coming from Congo is relatively small, from one percent to 12 percent, depending on the specific mineral. Tantalum is temporarily much higher, at approximately 30 percent, because the largest supplier of tantalum, Australia, recently suspended production. Major alternative sources of these minerals include:

Tin: China, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil
Tantalum: Australia, Brazil, Canada
Tungsten: China, Russia, Canada
Gold: South Africa, Australia, the United States, China

It is important to note that the Enough Project is not calling for a ban or boycott of Congolese minerals, which would hurt miners. Instead, we encourage the development of legitimate, conflict-free mineral supplies from Congo through the development of tracing and auditing.

CG: What plans do Raise Hope for Congo have for the future?

RHFC: Raise Hope for Congo is continuing to promote a holistic approach to ending violence in eastern Congo. There are numerous factors we see as essential to peace and stability in Congo, from security sector reform to justice and accountability, from ensuring a more transparent process for returning refugees to devising an effective strategy to dismantle the FDLR and Congo’s many other militia groups. We recognize that the conflict has several driving forces, including the trade in illicit conflict minerals.

We are continuing to raise awareness about the link between consumer electronics and violence in Congo. We want to show electronics companies that there is strong consumer demand for conflict-free electronics and pressure them to clean up their supply chains.

As part of this effort, we are formulating a report for consumer reference which will be released this fall that ranks top electronics companies based on their efforts to support the conflict-free movement and start the process of cleaning up their supply chains in Congo. The companies will be ranked in a way that informs consumers which companies are working toward corporate responsibility and which companies are lagging behind. It is our hope that this ranking system will be a good start in helping consumers discriminate between companies – incentivizing forward leaning companies and punishing those that are not adequately addressing the issue.

We are also launching a Conflict-Free Campus Initiative with partners, that encourages students of higher education institutions to call on their board of directors to pass a resolution that publicly expresses their support for conflict-free electronics. This will demonstrate a powerful institutional demand to electronics companies in addition to the thousands of individual consumers who have already taken action.

We hope that this has inspired you to help. If so – or if you simply want to find out more about Raise Hope For Congo – head to http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/ for more information, and a link to their e mail campaign.

The undead have given the government something to think about when the Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality (CURE) staged a political protest outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday afternoon, with the event supported by Capcom.

Leader of the CURE party, Harry Cole was joined by a crowed of over 50 undead, demanding that zombies receive the same basic rights as the living through the medium of catchy sayings on placards.

“With the coalition treating the electorate as zombies, we thought we’d illustrate the strength of feeling by bringing our cause direct to Parliament,” said Mr Cole.

“We fielded candidates in four constituencies in the UK General Election, and only came last in one of them – it’s clear our manifesto already appeals. And now we’ve taken our cause to the heart of Government, we expect our manifesto to gain wider attention.”

If you’re interested in finding out more information about CURE, you can visit their website here.

• Format: Xbox Live (version reviewed), PSN
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
• Players: 1 (2-4 Local)
• Site: http://shop.ubi.com/promo/73623700

Chances are that within the last two weeks or so you will have at least heard of Scott Pilgrim. Along with being a very successful graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which reached its final volume earlier this year, it is also a recently released movie and retro style Xbox Live/PSN arcade game.

The three are somewhat separate entities but are linked by the same core story. Scott Pilgrim is a bass player in a terrible band who falls in love with Ramona Flowers. In order to successfully date her, he must defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. It’s lucky then, that Scott happens to be the best fighter in the province.

Playing like classics such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon, Scott Pilgrim VS The World: The Game, besides being a mouthful of a game title, is a 2D pixel-laden, button bashing, punch-throwing extravaganza across seven levels presented to the player on a world map parodying Super Mario 3. The choice to go retro is one which will appeal to fans of O’Malley’s comics and those of a certain age looking for some nostalgia. It is also safe to say that the comics have far more influence on the game (art style, content, look and feel) than the movie, which may also appeal more to fans.

There is a fairly simple levelling system in place up to a maximum of Lv16 to unlock new techniques for each of the four playable characters (Scott, Ramona, Stephen Stills and Kim), plus unlockable characters and game modes (Boss Rush and Survival Horror). You can also spend money dropped from enemies and bosses on healing items and items which permanently upgrade statistics such as strength and defence that carry over across the three difficulties available.

While the game can be played by up to four people, it is local co-op only. Why Ubisoft would neglect online functionality is a mystery and a foolish mistake. It is sometimes not convenient or desirable to have four people sharing a couch. There is also no drop-in, drop-out feature even if playing locally with other people. This game is nowhere near as fun when playing alone and it is also considerably harder thanks to enemies that aren’t shy about rushing in to attack you. Even AI support would have been an improvement. Team attacks (activated by simultaneous taunts) are also denied when playing alone.

One last truly stand out feature of this game is the soundtrack, provided by the 8-bit rockers Anamanguchi. Their retro style fits the game perfectly with many tracks you will love to hear as you bash your way through waves of enemies. The soundtrack is almost worth the price of admission alone, which is admittedly a bit high for the game.

You can pick up Scott Pilgrim VS The World: The Game for 800 MS points or £7.99 on PSN and a demo is also available to try before you buy. It’s worth checking out for some old school nostalgia or if you simply like the brawler genre. Should a patch add online co-op in the near future then add an extra point to the final score.

4/5

Do you hear that banging noise, just echoing in the distance? It’s an interesting phenomenon, but it could possibly be explained by the combination of heads and fists hitting desks as Microsoft announce that they are raising the price of Xbox Live.

The news dropped today when it appeared on Major Nelson’s blog that the price for Xbox Live Gold subscriptions will be rising in Canada, Mexico, the United Kindom and the United States from November 1 this year.

The damage to US subscribers is that a one month subscription will now cost $9.99, three months $24.99 and a year will be $59.99. In the UK and Canada, one month of Xbox Live Gold will now cost £5.99 and $9.99 respectively. Mexico’s Xbox Live subscription for a year has risen to 599 Pesos.

Apparently these figures listed will be the only ones affected, so a 12 month Xbox Live Gold plan in the UK should stay the same according to the blog.

Microsoft are offering a discounted 12 months at $39.99 if you fancy topping up your Xbox Gold subscription before the price jumps up.

This was still not enough to calm the delicate waters of the comments field however, as the vast majority are very unhappy with this rise, questioning why they should pay even more on top of what is already the most expensive online option for playing games.

Things that you win always taste sweeter (or meatier if you’re a savoury person) than things that you spend your money on. Recognising this, Rising Star Games are giving away a copy of Pang: Magical Michael on the Nintendo DS to one lucky winner every week for five weeks.

All you have to do is identify the landmark in this trailer and send your guess to comp@risingstargames.com for your chance to win. Winners will be announced on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s the official game blurb:

“Michael, an aspiring young magician, has failed an experiment – leading to dire consequences. Balloons have been dispersed, causing trouble to landmarks and cities all around the world. Now, Michael must travel the globe to destroy these balloons and clean up his mistake, before it’s too late.”

• Format: XBLA (version reviewed), PSN, PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• Developer: Klei Entertainment
• Players: 1-2
• Site: http://shankgame.com/

If The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is 2D Ninja Gaiden, Shank is 2D God of War. It’s a pretty game with flashy combat and moments of badassery that come at the expense of precision. The fighting game pedigree that carried over into those aforementioned games (and even the more recent God of War games) is a bit lacking here. As a result, it’s all too often that Shank (the protagonist) seems to slip from your control like a wet bar of soap.

That wouldn’t be a problem if the game was all flash with no substance, but the AI enemies don’t mess around. They attack in mobs, exploiting any moment of weakness with a barrage of bullets or a quick stab from behind. The challenge is welcome, but Shank’s easily punished repertoire of combos is not. Sometimes he just tries too hard to be cool, and as a result ends up shooting bullets in the air at enemies that aren’t there or failing to block while he finishes a flashy combo.

It’s those moments in Shank, when things just don’t work, that deflate what should be a relentlessly awesome experience. When it does work (which is most of the time) bouncing between three distinct weapons, leaping across the room at enemies, or executing showy gun combos feels incredibly satisfying.

Shank is a story of revenge, one inspired by…well, Robert Rodriguez movies mostly. Turn the upcoming film Machete into a cartoon and stylistically, you wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart. Shank plays its Mexican drug cartel violence a little too seriously though. Especially with the Samurai Jack-esque art style and flat voice acting that makes the story laughably corny.

You basically fight your way from one criminal stereotype to the next. The plot is filled with violent beheadings, strippers, misogyny, torture, and just about any scenario you can imagine a teenager coming up with after a binge of revenge movies. Devoid of any kind of substance, self-aware comedy, or unique style, the story is just sort of annoying.

Shank’s co-op mode works as a prequel to the story. With two players, the screen is a bit busy, but it’s a fun time regardless. Boss fights require players to work together in clever ways and finishing a tough fight with a partner is an awesome experience. Still, if you don’t have a like-minded friend around to enjoy the game with, Shank is going to be an alarmingly brief experience.

Between single-player and co-op modes, the game rounds out at an all-too brief 5-6 hours. After that, there’s hard mode (which is insanely difficult), and some extra costumes to unlock, but overall there’s little reason to go back. Even over the course of those initial hours, the experience starts to drag. Areas and enemies are repeated far too often to keep the gameplay feeling fresh. By the eighteenth time you leap dramatically through a window it loses its impact.

Shank is the kind of game that’s a blast when you first start playing, but as it drags on, the flaws become a bit too apparent. That it wears out its welcome so quickly is a serious issue. And with so much style, it’s unfortunate that it feels so soulless. It’s not at all a bad game, at least average, even great if you’re willing to look past the issues; but in the grand scheme of character action games, Shank is a big letdown.

2/5

Spawn camp victims are getting a bit of relief with the spawn invincibility timer now giving players a few more vital seconds to establish their surroundings and not get their head blown into paste by the guy who has been eagerly shooting the entire team as they suddenly come back into existence.

Matchmaking has seen some improvements, and there have also been dozens of little tweaks to make the game run a bit smoother and more streamlined.

“The entire team took fan feedback and critique to heart and constructed the update to specifically address their concerns,” said Jared Gerritzen, Lead Designer at Zombie Studios. “As one of the summer’s top XBLA downloads, we’re really happy with the way fans have been enjoying the game, and we’ll continue to make sure players are having the best online experience possible.”

This update has been deployed for the XBLA and the PC version of the game, and will be shipped with the PSN version when it is released in the next few weeks.

With David Perry after the interview. It's okay to be a fan of game developers.

Gaikai, as its own website mentions, is streaming, cloud-based gaming technology which allows gamers to play, preview, and demo PC and console video games for free. Now, what is Gaikai exactly? We talk to CEO and co-founder of Gaikai, David Perry. He discusses Gaikai, which according to him finally makes computing (and gaming) ubiquitous. He discusses what it does, what it changes and the many more possibilities it will have in the future.

What does Gaikai mean? “One of the original founders came up with this name. It’s a Japanese word for the vast, open ocean. Think of it as a word meaning a large open space to be discovered, and that’s what we kind of believe that this is all about. We’re kind of saying to people, “Join us in this voyage to try to explore this space.” The concept is that [on] anything with a screen, you can experience a 6,000 dollar computer [that’s situated] somewhere else. So you don’t need to buy this ridiculously powerful machine, but you have all the power of it in your hands.”

YOU buy this 6,000 dollar machine? “Yeah. We buy the machine, we’ll part with that money, but wherever you are, on a little notebook, you’re able to have so much more computing power. That concept of experiencing one device through another is kind of the whole idea.”

How come no one else has ever thought of that? It sounds … logical. “Yeah. It is logical. And it has been thought of. If you go to an airport, they’re sitting typing on terminals when they’re checking your ticket and it’s a very simple terminal with very basic capabilities. But, it’s connected to a supercomputer somewhere else that’s running the entire technical system for British Airways or who-ever. And that’s basically the same concept. It’s just never been done in 3D, with Call of Duty and everything else. The ones at the airport can’t play Call of Duty on everyone’s computer, it just can’t do it. There was no company I could go to, there was no infrastructure I could rent, hire or buy or anything that could just take care of this problem. It all had to be created from scratch: the management software, the server designs, the relationships with the data centers, everything had to be done from scratch.”

So, you’re the first ones who are creating a service like this. Which obviously means that there will be quite a lot of problems at first. What are the problems that you are anticipating? “The biggest problem I think is a business model. Trying to come up with the right business model that works well for this is hard because it’s so new. I have one competitor, so there’s two companies doing this; there’s OnLive and there’s Gaikai. OnLive charges a subscription to use their service and I was just reading the terms of service today, and their terms of service clearly state: if you stop paying you lose everything. You will walk away from everything, all the games you bought, everything is gone. And that’s never been done before. And that’s the problem, trying to come up with a business model.

“They’ve come up with one but I just can’t understand the logic. Imagine you paid a subscription to load iTunes, so you have to pay fifteen dollars every month just to load it. You can listen to previews, but you can not play any music, you have to buy all the music. And if you ever stop the subscription, all the music you’ve bought gets deleted. That’s the model they’ve decided to come up with. And I don’t know how they’re going to try and explain it to people in a way that makes that feel good.

“The second point is, if you read their terms of service, ‘we don’t guarantee you an internet connection, because the internet is unpredictable’, blah blah blah. So that basically means you’re not going to have access to your music whenever you wanted. So you don’t own the stuff you buy and they can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to hear it when you want to; that’s what they’re offering. And that’s really the difference with Gaikai, there’s two ways to go.

“At every point there’s this way and [the other] way, and everytime they went this way, we went [the other] way. It’s very interesting to see how two companies that are doing something similar could do them so differently, and that’s what our whole mantra is. So first of all, our services are completely free. The users don’t pay anything. If you want to try the newest games from whatever publisher, you can try them on our servers and pay nothing. There’s no subscription, no registration and no download or install. I don’t want your personal information, I don’t want to hassle you about anything, just play it. If you like it, buy it, if you don’t like it, we’re done.

“What I’m really replacing is the banner advert that would have been on the page. My competitor is Google, that’s the company I’m going after. When people pay for those banner ads, those are really expensive if you look at how the math works out. And if I can take a piece of that money  that is getting wasted on banner ads, when I can turn a visitor into a player it’s much more valuable. So that means I don’t need to inconvenience the player at all for the cost of play, and that is more compatible with people today. People love free.” * Perry shows a video demo of Gaikai as he used it in his own home through a server in Los Angeles. He smoothly switches between games. He goes from World of Warcraft to Spore,  no installs, no updates, no hassle, just instant play.*

No install, no patching... just World of Warcraft.

“So this is not running on this computer, this is running on a different computer. But I’m able to decide; is this the kind of game I’d like to play? So if you think about it, you’d probably try more stuff. This WoW is 15 GB to download because it also has two expansions installed with it. So if you wanted to sit down and get them you would be busy all afternoon with downloading, installing and the patches and everything. But with [Gaikai] you just click it and you’re able to take a look.

“We’ve also worked with Adobe for the last year to get Flash to support this. We’re using the fastest hard drives money can buy, so you get a better performance than a typical desktop would get. You’re gonna find it hard to buy a computer as fast as the ones we have, because it’s the latest in video cards, the latest Intel processors; it’s absolutely top of the line as far as computing goes. Which means that to most people on a computer that’s maybe one or two years old, it will be a premium experience. That’s the idea.“

How far along are you with finalizing the Gaikai platform? “It fully works now. So it’s not like this is still years away or something, I can already do it. You see it in the video; that was me playing it at home.”

So there is already a lot of support from publishers for Gaikai? “Yeah, we’re going to start announcing some of the partnerships. There’s one rule in this business, which is the Achilles heel of this whole thing: this only works for good games. My helping you play a game that is not good is not going to help the publisher at all. It only helps good games, and that’s important. And it’s important for us, because we want to get known that every time we offer you something you know it’s probably good. So we’re not going to be operating a thousand games. The idea is to keep the number of games low, but very good. That’s what will make the publishers want to pay us. We have to be paid, just to be clear, but we get paid by the publisher so that means we won’t have to trouble the consumer at all.”

So on what scale will you be launching? How many servers are you planning to have? How many do you have? “The way it works is: the closeness to the server is actually critical, it’s a key thing. So my target is to have 300 data centers in the world. It will take 50 or so just to cover the US. Right now, today, we have 11 data centers live and we add new ones constantly. Amsterdam just came online in the last few days, Paris is next and then London. So we just keep adding data centers. Denver is coming online soon and so is Minneapolis. We just keep going one after the other.

All the dots are the Gaikai servers and the area they reach.

“We have a map of the US. The white dots are the data centers, and every time we add one on it starts lighting up green dots around the area. It has weird and strange patterns because of the way the Internet is wired. So it’s not like you think; you can’t just make a big perfect circle or something. It makes a strange pattern and you can start to see where servers are needed. So we’re launching this month with around 30 million minutes of server time. And that’s what we sell publishers; minutes. By Christmas I will be selling 300 million minutes a month of demo time across the US, and then I will try to replicate that in Europe and that would give me a total of 600 million minutes a month. And that’s plenty of inventory. That’s a lot of demo time.”

Besides streaming games, what future applications do you have in mind for this? “There’s lots of doors that it opens. It affects game development in every possible way. The fact that I’m sending video to this computer here means this user is having that experience. But that video can also be sent to the game designer as well as the users. So the game designer is actually able to watch thousands of beta testers and monitor what’s going on. For example, all these beta testers are playing, but they keep getting stuck somewhere. He can see this and watch whatever the problem is, then he can actually fix that piece of code and reflash the network so the users don’t even need to know. They don’t have to download anything, they don’t have to patch anything. Next time they play, the game designer will be able to actually see whether it has fixed the problem or not. So the idea of real-time tuning is very valuable.

“Another one is real-time crash analysis. If you crash a game, currently they get reports back saying ‘well I was jumping up and down and it crashed’, right? Which is no help at all. So is there a way to improve that using this technology? The answer is yes. So if you crash the game we know on our server that you crashed it, so we can take the last thirty seconds of video and automatically forward it to the developer. You don’t even have to type in reports anymore.

“Then there’s other things too, like cybercafés. I went to a cybercafé and they have 250 gaming boxes and they have to replace them every 18 months because people are paying to use them and therefore they have to be really good. If they want to update a game, like when a World of Warcraft patch comes out, they have to log into each one remotely and patch it. That’s 250 times that you have to log in and patch things, and that’s crazy. If they would use technology like this, they could just buy machines that are simple, that just play Flash or whatever, and then they patch it once on their main server and all the boxes in the room are updated. It could change that whole space completely.

“It is the same for computer software. A demonstration I do is Photoshop loading really really fast, which means now I have Photoshop everywhere I go. They’re 600 dollars a pop, so I don’t want to have a licence key for my office, my home ánd my laptop. I want to be able to just pay them the time I use but have it everywhere I go. And all the files are safe in the cloud. So if I go to England or something I’ve got everything in the cloud ready to go. So that idea of software being ubiquitous, I can then pick up my iPad and continue my Photoshop where I left off. That is kind of neat. The idea that the game goes with you wherever you go, is something that is absolutely do-able today. This is not like something in the future, we can do that right now.”

Gaikai. With "right now" he really means right now.

The whole concept of ubiquitous computing has been something that we’ve all wanted since the dawn of the internet. “I know, and now you can actually do it. Another thing you can do is the sharing of games. My vision that I’m really pushing on the publishers is that I want you to be the first one to discover a new game. You’re the first one in the new Diablo game, for example. First one of all of your friends. I want you to be able to tweet: ‘oh my god, I’m in Diablo 3′, then hit enter, and it sends a link, and if your friends click that link, they are teleported to you inside that game.

“So imagine you’re playing some MMO and you’re running around and you tweet out from within the application ‘hey join me’. Your friends, just like in Star Trek, can beam in around you, and none of them have to register or download or install. None of them know what publisher makes this game, they don’t need to know. They just arrive and they’re now in the world and you’re all playing together. That idea of sharing with no friction is completely possible with this technology.”

There are probably a lot of ideas going around in your head. For example, combining this technology with social networks. “I have a demonstration I’m going to show at E3 of playing MMO’s inside Facebook, without leaving Facebook. So it loads faster than Farmville, because Farmville has to load a flash file. Ours is just connecting you to a video stream out there. It means that I can put Call of Duty or Madden or whatever you want to play in Facebook.”

I immediately have these horrible flashbacks to the CoD:MW2 multiplayer system, IWNet, which has really horrible and problematic connection issues. How stable are the Gaikai Servers? “Well that’s a really good question, a very important question actually. It’s a big concept difference between what we’re doing and OnLive. OnLive is offering service, so ‘come pay us a subscription and play’, which means you really need the answer to that question. It’d better be good or you’ll get really mad, right.

“This is what we do using your website as an example. You have a website where gamers go to. I have publishers that would like access to your gamers. Imagine you’re writing an article about a new downloadable game and you can put one line of Gaikai code on your website, which is one line and no change to the website whatsoever. Every minute that anyone plays that game online on your site we will pay you. And we don’t just pay you a little bit, you get exactly what we get; a 50/50 split.

“Another thing is that the players play the game on your website so the time spent on your website goes up. And the thing that’s important is that the gamer has no expectations of this, so if they’re in Alaska or Egypt or somewhere where we don’t have servers, they just use your site like they’ve always used it. And it’s not like your site says ‘Click here to play this game’. What happens is, they’re reading your article and while they’re reading the article I go have a look and see if there’s a Gaikai server near this person, and if there is the button appears. So the button only appears for the people who are close to one of our servers.

“So because of that we took away the whole problem of ‘is it going to be foggy or not?’, because we pre-test the quality before they get the button; we know they’re close and we know their connection’s good. Every time the button appears we look at where they’re coming from and we can see that we need to have some servers in Alaska or in Egypt.”

How did you start with this idea? “Well, this is what I learned from [working at] Acclaim. The last game I launced at Acclaim was 3.5 GB to download. That really, really, really is a problem. At 3.5 GB, what actually happens is you spend money trying to get them to click, and we would force them to register too, so you would have to register and we’d lose a lot of people there. Then you have to download, and no one can download 3.5 GB like that. Which basically means that they’re all going to do something else. So what you’re relying on is for them to come back to you and then continue where they left off, which actually a shocking amount of people don’t do. They never come back. So they’ve gone through the pain of downloading the file, they’ve got it on their hard drive and they never ever click on it.

“The point is even when you think you’ve succeeded you can still lose. I can’t tell you what is going to happen, I honestly can’t tell you, but I believe very strongly in what we are doing. I think it makes sense. The only problem with the publishers is that they are on two levels. First the publishers that still have the good [development] teams available. We want them to think about ways to modify their games to keep them as frictionless as possible. Then there are publishers who don’t have the original teams anymore, so that as soon as the game is done the team disappears. It means we have to deal with any issues with the games ourselves, and that’s hard work. We had to set up a system to fix other people’s bugs. You have to go into the code, and that’s extra work. Most people don’t even know what we’re doing. A lot of people think we’re just making another version of OnLive or something like that.”

Ubiquitous computing. Yes, that means iPad as well.

You started in Amsterdam, why there? “My two co-founders are from there. They met each other in Amsterdam and they got this whole thing running and then they got me in. They had a whole different vision. Their vision was to let you play arcade games online so that you wouldn’t have to find an arcade machine. That was what they were trying to achieve. They were working on this very core technology to see how you could do that, and it was very cool. Then they called me and said, would you like to see this running? I had just given a speech about the subject and so I didn’t believe them, and they’re like: “No, no, we saw the speech, and we’ve been working on this actually.”

“They had just gotten WoW running so they sent me a link and that’s what got me involved. From there we evolved the business model, got the funding we have, and 21 staff working on it. So it’s a proper company. At this point it’s just a case of executing and getting all the servers up. The servers are hand-built, all of them.”

• Format: Wii
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Developer: Treasure
• Players: 1-2
• Site: http://sinandpunishment.com/

At one point in Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, your buddy is suspended over a rising pit of lava by a reptilian guinea pig. In another level, you travel the desert to fight a sand-lion and a sand-bird that morph together into a sand-lion-bird. You’ll even journey through someone’s dreams of ancient Japan and eventually make a trek into space because, honestly, that’s really the only place left to go.

Treasure’s latest is nuts, and if not for the fact that they’ve been making psychotic shooter games for nearly two decades, this would almost seem like a last hurrah for the company. After all, they’ve been making incredibly niche games for longer than any studio should logically get away with.

Sin & Punishment drips with creativity – so much so, you rarely know how you’ll be playing it from one moment to the next. At the core is a 3D rail-shooter a la Panzer Dragoon or Rez, but that doesn’t stop the game from turning into a bullet-hell shooter or a side-scrolling beat ‘em up at random moments. And in true Treasure style, the game is bursting at the seams with boss fights – creative encounters that make up for ample checkpoints with concentrated bursts of incredible challenge.

There’s so much packed in that it almost collapses under its own weight. The rail-shooting sections alone are so good that the constant divergences can get kind of annoying. If you’ve ever played the Gears of War games, they suffer from a similar design. Just like those games, all-too-often it’s the weird vehicle section or punishing boss fight that stops you in your tracks, and not the core gameplay.

At the same time this also means the game is a lot longer than most shoot ‘em up style games. On the normal difficulty it can take around six hours, and even if you breeze through it there’s solid leaderboard support and a harder difficulty level. It’s the kind of game designed to be played over and over for high scores. After you complete levels, you can play them individually for practice and for attempts to top the leaderboard.

Like the best Wii games, it’s hard to imagine playing this one with anything but the Wii remote and nunchuk combo. The feeling of simultaneously dancing around bullets and quickly snapping your aim around the screen is liberating. Sure, you could play with a standard controller, but you wouldn’t want to.

Unlike the best Wii games, the two-player mode is a bit lacking. The second player is little more than an extra reticle that can shoot independentally of the first player. It’s almost as superficial as the two-player mode in Super Mario Galaxy, which was intended for younger siblings or inexperienced players.

What it lacks in multiplayer options it makes up with lots of playstyle customization. As mentioned, the game supports standard controllers like the Gamecube and Classic pads, and if you insist on using them there’s options for customizing layout and sensitivity. Additionally, each of the two characters handle differently. Isa, the boy, uses shots that require more accuracy, complemented by a large bomb attack. Meanwhile, Kachi, the girl/strange monster, or demon, or something (it’s not really clear) has a lock-on ability and Panzer Dragoon-style lasers.

The point is, if you’re into these kinds of arcade-style shoot ‘em ups, Sin & Punishment is surprisingly robust compared to most of its contemporaries, including many of Treasure’s own games.

In terms of presentation, Sin & Punishment is a bit lacking. While the game is sharply rendered with lots of enemies, the color palette is a bit too washed out. Treasure has gone for this style before, with Ikaruga, but the black/white mechanic of that game allowed them to use it to better effect. Here it just makes the world feel unnecessarily bland, especially in context to the absurd situations you get into.

The story is even worse. It’s old hat for Treasure at this point, as they’ve never been much for telling good stories, or even ones that make a lick of sense. But it’s just kind of annoying – everything you need to know happens within the context of the action, and it’d be better if they just tossed the storyline altogether. The cutscenes are minimal, but they just feel like a waste when the best part is the absurdity of the moment-to-moment set-pieces.

What makes this game memorable isn’t the words coming out of the characters mouths. What makes it memorable is the interactive ride it takes you on. The game is at its best when you’re bouncing between fighting hand-to-hand, riding a hover-bike, and playing soccer with incoming missiles one after the other.

Sin & Punishment has some issues, but honestly if you’re in for a Treasure game you probably know this by now. Flaws and all, it still stands as an excellent example of the rail-shooter genre, and that’s saying a lot. There aren’t a ton of these things, and if you happen to have fond memories of Panzer Dragoon or Rez, Treasure’s latest is sure to give you some warm, fuzzy nostalgia.

7/10